Cooking food items and changes to nutrition..

wewon

Does the cooking process change the nutritional value of a food item just due to the chemical changes? If so how to you construct a good profile of what you're eating for your food diary?

The reason that I ask:

Sometimes a specific item isn't located in the database or it's a recipe that I use and I want to assemble it in my personal data base.

For something like a sandwich this is easy, take each item independently and add them up using MFP. But for something that would include caramelized onions the sugar content changes from a raw onion.

I was planning on roasting some fruits and having them with some greek yogurt, but I'm sure that taking all of fruits from the database as raw isn't the same as those same fruits after being roasted for 45 minutes.

MyNameIsNotBob

There are entries for caramelized onions & some roasted fruits. You can try searching other databases, as well. It's not really an exact science. I often find myself using "best guesses" or "close enough" entries.

Schwiggity

It usually won't make any difference for the macronutrients except that some of the water in the vegetables/fruits gets cooked out. It does have an effect on vitamins and minerals, but I'm not 100% sure what all of them are. (I know that if you cook green beans, broccoli or asparagus to death though, that you're losing a lot of the vitamins in them).